Passing on.
Sep. 14th, 2004 09:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elwenI feel old. In webtime, that happens when once more I realize that I'm no longer a newbie, or even a regular, but one of the "elders", seen by others as one who was there before. And I discover that the ones whom I saw that way are gone.
It happened on AGNP, though I guess the newsgroup was fairly young when I first joined. I mean, those were the days before even Yellow was released, when all we had were Red and Blue. And PW! was born, and I was a silly, naive, angst-filled junior high student. In some ways, it doesn't seem like so long ago, and it some ways, it seems like an unbridgeable age ago.
It happened with online journals. Before weblogs became a staple of online publishing, when Open Pages was the webring to join, with Kymm its goddess, and everyone told you to read Julie's essay on sheep. Well, no one ever looked up to me as an online journaler, thankfully. But there came a time when the first journals I read were all gone, and I realized that I'd been around just about as long as most of the other people still updating. That was scary. And now I've faded away just like so many others.
So today I got an email from someone who wanted me to link his site, saying he had been inspired to start skinning because of my site and another, and I realized that yet another of my hobbies has come full circle. I looked up to Ruby and Satsuki, to Mel and Jac, to wing-zero and to Zeruel, and to Ragabash. And now they're all gone, sites non-updated until the domains disappear, or hidden behind a permanent "back soon" message.
The sites that people know now probably aren't any older than mine. They're from my generation. Will we eventually all disappear, too? Is the person who emailed me today one of our successors?
It's depressing to think of the fleetingness of the web, and how quickly some project we love so dearly can lose the interest of its creator. (Since I'm mourning what is gone, let me mention the amazing Clockwork Storybook, that opened my eyes to so many interesting mythologies, and always seemed to me like a more adult version of Harry Potter, with its hidden community of magic users.) They say that it all hangs around, on the web, but who really looks?
It happened on AGNP, though I guess the newsgroup was fairly young when I first joined. I mean, those were the days before even Yellow was released, when all we had were Red and Blue. And PW! was born, and I was a silly, naive, angst-filled junior high student. In some ways, it doesn't seem like so long ago, and it some ways, it seems like an unbridgeable age ago.
It happened with online journals. Before weblogs became a staple of online publishing, when Open Pages was the webring to join, with Kymm its goddess, and everyone told you to read Julie's essay on sheep. Well, no one ever looked up to me as an online journaler, thankfully. But there came a time when the first journals I read were all gone, and I realized that I'd been around just about as long as most of the other people still updating. That was scary. And now I've faded away just like so many others.
So today I got an email from someone who wanted me to link his site, saying he had been inspired to start skinning because of my site and another, and I realized that yet another of my hobbies has come full circle. I looked up to Ruby and Satsuki, to Mel and Jac, to wing-zero and to Zeruel, and to Ragabash. And now they're all gone, sites non-updated until the domains disappear, or hidden behind a permanent "back soon" message.
The sites that people know now probably aren't any older than mine. They're from my generation. Will we eventually all disappear, too? Is the person who emailed me today one of our successors?
It's depressing to think of the fleetingness of the web, and how quickly some project we love so dearly can lose the interest of its creator. (Since I'm mourning what is gone, let me mention the amazing Clockwork Storybook, that opened my eyes to so many interesting mythologies, and always seemed to me like a more adult version of Harry Potter, with its hidden community of magic users.) They say that it all hangs around, on the web, but who really looks?
no subject
Date: 2004-09-14 09:57 pm (UTC)As for lost skinners: Wingy's in grad school, which is what ate her. Her journal's over at
(Actually, I think that's what ate most of those people. They graduated and got real jobs, and got married or something, and got new hobbies. Sad but true.)